Clean Getaway
by westpoints
Summary: complete 'She liked to pretend that Sharpay was a lot of things.' A bittersweet chronicle of Kelsi and her attempts to get away from Sharpay. Kelpay? Sure, it's called Kelpay now.


So, as you guys might remember, a while back, I wrote a Kelpay fic called "An Exercise of Secrecy." Now I liked it and all, but then I sat down to write a second one, and it came out completely different, and an epic, as many of my HSM fics have been of late. If you really want to know exactly why I've delved into Kelpay, then just ask.

There's some stylistic issues in here somewhere, but I can't really pinpoint it, so I'll just let you read and decide after I

_Disclaimer: Seriously, if Disney ever actually carried through with this..._

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Kelsi Nielsen stepped carefully inside her new apartment, the shadow of her meek high school persona lingering in her footsteps. It smelled like new paint, though the slightly dusty state of the walls didn't indicate that any kind of remodeling had taken place here.

Her bed had been moved in, along with a tattered chair and some collapsible furniture. The rest was at home. Well, that wasn't home anymore. The rest was at her last living place, which was a condo she shared with three other people.

She paused at the door to her new bedroom, leaning against the doorjamb, a position she'd picked up from Sharpay when Sharpay still held that much influence over her. God, Sharpay. Kelsi crossed her arms, still leaning in the doorway, and stared out the window at the cloudy sky. This new apartment was hardly replacement for her roommates and a three-bedroom suite. (_I made my place by the door. I didn't know what I was waiting for._)

The bed was the same, though. Same bed, twin sized, nondescript blue sheets, blue comforter, white pillows. If she stuffed the pillow to her nose, sometimes she could smell something like rose or jasmine, but it wasn't really rose or jasmine. It was Chanel No. 5, and because she'd never smelled real roses or jasmine before, Kelsi liked to pretend that Chanel No. 5 was a good substitute. She liked to pretend that Sharpay was a lot of things.

That was back then, when normal-smelling walls were littered with pictures and home-made decorations. There had been a hint of a lawn and some bikes and good, sunny weather. And now there was only some concrete and rain. (_It felt just like home...except no grass, no yard, no pictures and..._)

Through the window, Kelsi could see a group of people, four or five; they were too far away, in a park, where the concrete buildings around it hadn't encroached on nice, green grass. They tossed around a Frisbee in the stiff April air of Seattle, tackled each other to the ground, laughed, and if they were ten years younger, they would look like college students with a free afternoon on their hands. (_I could see across to the park. And there were friends, they were laughing hard._)

Now they just looked like mid-life crises who'd missed the last train to their second childhoods.

Kelsi could remember when that group was hers. In high school, maybe, with Jason and Chad and Troy and Gabriella. She was wary of them, wary of any non-Drama Geeks, but they were Jason's friends, and she _was_ making such an effort then. Maybe too much effort, as she'd gotten hit in the head with a Frisbee the first time she hung out with them. Sharpay took one look at the bruise on Kelsi's cheek the next day and laughed.

She almost said "I told you so," but didn't.

Years later, in a different park with different people, ones Kelsi was much more comfortable around, another Frisbee knocked the glasses off her face. And then Sharpay did say "I told you so." (_They looked just like my own. With no face, no name, no voice I'd know._)

An ominous thundercloud rolled over the park, and Kelsi turned away, not wanting to see those people dance in the rain, because that was just too jovial.

She padded back across the living space, just ten feet of carpet between the bedroom and the kitchenette, and opened the mini-fridge. Two apples and a bottle of water, that she brought from San Francisco. And some fossilized ice cream in the flap-covered "freezer." She wondered how that got there. Maybe the last tenants left it, along with the unopened box of bikini wax under the bathroom sink. Kelsi stopped that line of thought right there.

Three hours in, and Seattle was getting more desolate every minute.

She wanted to go home, except she didn't know where home was, exactly. She'd heard that home was where the heart was, but she seemed to have misplaced that part of her anatomy.

If that last thought wasn't so melodramatic, she might have written it down.

Either way, home was most certainly not here.

In fact, if she thought about it, she moved here simply because it was Not Home. (_I finally made it. I made a clean getaway._)

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It all started, really in freshman year. And really, seriously, it was all Sharpay's fault.

Kelsi was just an innocent, new freshman transferring from Santa Fe. It wasn't her fault at all that she was the only musical-obsessed piano player in the school. It wasn't her fault that Sharpay and Ryan were really good at theater. It wasn't her fault that Sharpay was pretty underneath all the make-up that made her beautiful, and it wasn't her fault that Sharpay had no sense of personal space.

It started, specifically, onstage one day, during rehearsals for _Bye Bye, Birdie_. It was the end of the day, Sharpay was stalking across the stage—she always did like to leave through the house instead of the back door—and Kelsi was walking across the stage to get her bookbag and somehow, even though the stage was 25 feet by 22 feet, they'd collided.

Sharpay's purse fell to the ground.

Sharpay started to say "Watch it, Nielsen," as she bent down to retrieve it, but Kelsi was already there, only an inch shorter but not in heels. Kelsi half-straightened up, purse in hand, and Sharpay reached out to take it, only she reached too far.

Her fingers collided with Kelsi's forehead, and Kelsi flinched, expecting something harsher. But the fingers lingered, soft, slipped down her temple, past her cheek, ended at her chin.

Kelsi almost whimpered when those fingers fell to the purse, and Sharpay smiled at her, a predatory smile that said "I'm not going to eat you...now." Kelsi mumbled an apology and fled, head down, off the stage, retrieved her bookbag from an auditorium seat, and fled down the halls. She sought out a bathroom and dropped the bag, gripped a shiny white sink and stared at herself in the mirror.

Maybe, if she stayed in here long enough, she could make a clean getaway from Sharpay and not think about those fingers, not think about that face, or those lips, not think about things that freshmen girls should not think about.

Sharpay sauntered in three minutes later and kissed her.

And that was the end of that and the beginning of it.

So it was Sharpay's fault that, three years later, after Troy and Gabriella happened, after All In This Together happened, after the junior year that didn't go back to normal, after Kelsi got beaned with a Frisbee, the end of it came around, too.

"It's either me or Jason," Sharpay said. She said. She didn't growl or yell or whisper. She just said. They were standing in the science lab which sort of made for neutral ground, where neither of them was very good.

Kelsi looked at her, about to protest, but a sudden compulsion seized her tongue, and she found her vocal chords saying, almost as calmly, "No. It's either me or Chad."

Sharpay didn't bother to deny it. She knew that sometimes, Kelsi could smell Chad's sickening deodorant on her skin. "Okay." Neither of them remarked on the irony of their choices, between drama and basketball. They both picked drama, in the end, just not each other.

Kelsi wanted to pretend that she'd walked away from Sharpay at that point, but the truth was that they walked away at the same time, Sharpay to Boston, and Kelsi to San Francisco. A clean break. (_I finally made it. I made a clean getaway._)

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Nightlife in Seattle was...well it wasn't San Francisco, but for a city with the highest suicide rate in the country, its people liked to have a good time. After several outings over a few weeks to various nightclubs, Kelsi decided that her head couldn't take anymore loud thumping and propositioning from creepy lewd men, and settled for a low-key bar.

The guy sitting next to her looked tired. Tired and sad under the low bar lights, sipping a cold beer. His free hand drummed to the beat of the mellow indie band playing in the background, and she wondered why he chose to sit next to her when there were plenty of other empty chairs.

She asked him if he was okay. He smiled at her and said he was fine. (_I met someone at the bar._)

His name was Bryan. He was an actor at the local theater. She went to one of his plays, feeling completely out of place, completely uncomfortable with a stage that wasn't East High's, with seats that weren't red velvet, with a star that wasn't Sharpay.

"What brought you to Seattle?" he asked her, afterwards.

"Nothing." He raised his eyebrows. "No, I mean, it's not like...I came to Seattle because I didn't have to. I came because..."

"It was the first flight out of wherever you're from and you didn't care that it was the most depressing city in the world?" He laughed.

"Oh, stop it," she said.

"I won't ask where," he assured her. "You want to come in?"

His apartment had a lot more grass outside, a lot more room, a lot more furniture. Smelled like a normal apartment should. She lounged on his couch and they watched _The Producers_. He offered to lend her some money so she could buy her own things and still pay rent. (_He had a great smile and a great heart._)

About two months in, with new furniture in her apartment, Kelsi realized that sometimes, she worried about Bryan, worried that he might get in an accident or something worse, but she knew it was a stupid fear. It was just something to worry about when everything else didn't need worrying about, like the next day's weather or if he still liked her. (_It felt just like love_.)

For Christmas, she gave him a playbill from the original production of _Avenue Q_. She didn't tell him where she got it from. He gave her a contract from the theater. He'd suggested one of her scripts to a director, and she almost cried when he told her that he was starring in her new musical. Only four weeks, he said, and she was on her way to adult fame.

She slowly came to terms with the fact that she'd felt the same way about Sharpay before, a long time ago. A whirlwind of happiness and thrill and lust and fear. Fear of rejection, fear of loss, fear of disdain. Something like love, only it was hard for her to say that she loved Sharpay, and she had to fight to keep the words from rolling off her tongue when she was with Bryan. (_Except no fear of losing and it wasn't tough._)

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Kelsi shared a suite with five other people the first year of college, and after graduation, three of them lived with her to help pay for the rent. Carrie was a writer-musician like her, Virginia was a journalist, and Maria was an actress slash singer.

After graduation, she was subsiding on writing stories for local magazines and temping at a law firm when Maria came home to announce that at an audition, she'd met the "awesomest person ever," and she was inviting the girl over for dinner.

It really should have dawned on her when Maria said the word "Audition for Broadway," given her track record with karma. The "awesomest person ever" was Sharpay. She was trying to break out on Broadway, and this show was being produced in San Francisco. Maria was auditioning for ensemble.

The first thing Sharpay said to her, after no contact in over five years, was "What happened to your face?" Kelsi touched the fading bruise next to her eye.

"We were playing Frisbee with Maria's friends."

Sharpay laughed. "I told you so."

So Kelsi started drinking, which everyone else heartily joined in on, Sharpay smiling and laughing and mesmerizing as she'd been in high school. She told stories about stage mishaps, the Upright Citizen's Brigade, life in New York.

At around two in the morning, Maria decided that Sharpay would have to stay the night. Kelsi offered to sleep on the couch. Sharpay said it wasn't necessary, and simply followed Kelsi to her room, paused at the doorway, leaned against the frame, left arm resting on the wood over her head.

"I'd never peg you for blue sheets," she slurred, speech only slightly impaired as her eyes wandered over walls decorated with photographs of suitemates. Kelsi stayed by the light switch. "Last time I saw you, you were all red and black. But you wouldn't have black sheets. Red, maybe. Burgundy."

"I had burgundy sheets in high school," Kelsi answered, but she wasn't sure if it was in defense or in affirmation. And either way, Sharpay would have remembered something like that.

"No pictures of you," she commented.

"How do you know?" She was too far away to see specific images.

"You don't like getting your picture taken." Sharpay pushed herself off the doorjamb, and teetered into the room, falling backwards onto the blue-sheeted bed. "Don't know why. You're not ugly."

"Just not ugly?" Kelsi asked. Sharpay raised her head to appraise her.

"Well, I guess you're pretty now. The self-esteem is sexy. Wonder why you didn't have one in high school."

"Sharpay..."

"But that's okay. Cos I had you all to myself for a little while, then." Sharpay laughed.

"We can't do this, Sharpay."

Sharpay sat up, stomach taunt under a black tank top, any trace of inebriation dropping from her movements. "I know," she whispered. Kelsi flipped the switch, and suddenly, she could barely see Sharpay anymore.

"Just making sure," she said. It didn't surprise her that Sharpay cut her off with lips to hers. It did surprise her, a little while later, that as Sharpay drifted off to sleep, Kelsi let the ghost of a word out of her mouth. It started with "L," but denial and self-preservation kept the rest of it dead in her mind.

She let her fingers trickled over Sharpay's ribs in the late morning light, prominent under pale skin, and wondered if show business or self-control allowed the girl to get this thin. Sharpay squirmed away from the ticklish sensation, and when she stood up, the ribs receded from view, and Kelsi felt relieved that Sharpay hadn't changed that much.

A few months, a few months of leaning against doorjambs and empty mornings and muffled silences in the dark, a few months of Sharpay, Maria announced that the show was taking off. Sharpay stood in the background, over her shoulder, and she smiled when Kelsi hesitated as Carrie and Virginia went to go congratulate Maria. There was a week of previews in San Francisco before the company moved to New York to set up in the Hilton Theater. Maria had two tickets and Sharpay had one. Kelsi took one of Maria's and traded with Carrie before the opening night.

"I'm leaving soon," Sharpay said from Kelsi's bed, her hair splayed over blue-covered pillows.

"I know."

"I...God this is stupid. I've missed my sawed-off Sondheim. But I'm glad she's grown up now. So. If I'm ever here again. Which I will be, trust me. I'll look you up, and we can do lunch. Or something. If I have any free time." Kelsi looked up from the book in her hand. _Ragtime_.

"I'm leaving, too," Kelsi said decisively.

Sharpay didn't look surprised, but then, she was still an actress. She performed wonderfully in the previews. "Where are you going?"

"I don't know. I think I'll just pack my stuff and see where the first plane out of here goes."

"Sounds like a plan. Hope you get somewhere good. Like Paris. But I doubt you'd survive in Paris, all alone with all that chocolate and cheese and cigarettes. Good luck if you do, though."

Kelsi faltered, stood up from her chair, put the book down on a table. "Yeah. Thanks. Good luck on Broadway. You'll make it."

"Have you ever doubted that I would?"

"No." At this point, Kelsi did walk away from Sharpay, for a day, and when she came back, Sharpay was gone, and so was Maria. Carrie didn't ask; she shared a room with Virginia, only one bed, and they were anything but platonic, and no one had ever asked her. Kelsi didn't tell. By the next week, she was on a plane to Seattle. When she landed, she called Carrie, told her that she wasn't far, and could she please call a moving service and get them to move her bed out of the condo and to her new apartment?

A trucking company called her a few hours later, and she gave them directions all the way up to Seattle, and paid too much for the job, but then, it was her bed, and it still smelled like Sharpay sometimes.

She was never going to leave Seattle, and Sharpay was never going to come to Seattle. It wasn't closure, but then, Kelsi didn't really know what closure was. (_I finally made it. I made a clean getaway._)

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Bryan proposed. On opening night of the musical, he made the requisite curtain call speeches, pulled the writer onstage, and proposed.

Kelsi was completely mortified, but said yes, not because it was in front of a few hundred people, but because...because he was Bryan. She called her parents first, made them promise not to write it in to the paper, before inviting them to the wedding. She called up Carrie and Virginia, too, and almost called Maria, but then remembered where Maria probably was.

The ceremony happened. In June, at Bryan's church; Kelsi wore white and the bridesmaids wore light blue. Cake was chocolate, white buttercream icing. The best man didn't embarrass either of them, and no one got too drunk.

Her bouquet had roses. She pushed her nose into them before throwing it, almost swallowed the scent of them, and knew that the smell was not Chanel No. 5. She smiled when she threw it, and Carrie caught it, blushing as Virginia looked on. Someone gave her lavender scented sheets, white, and they didn't smell like Chanel No. 5, either.

The honeymoon was to Paris, where Kelsi did just fine with all the chocolate and cheese and cigarettes.

They came home, home this time applying to Bryan's apartment, where Kelsi's clothes occupied half the closet space, where Bryan's bed was fitted with the lavender scented sheets, where a Frisbee sat innocently by the door, never indicating its intentions of giving Kelsi a concussion.

Kelsi could honestly say that for once, she couldn't be happier. (_I finally made it. I made a clean getaway_.)

It was about two years later, when married life settled and they realized they were still in love with each other, when Kelsi had sold a script, when Bryan was directing; it was about two years when something unexpected came up. "Sharpay's getting married." Kelsi swallowed her cereal carefully before looking across the table at Bryan.

"Hm?"

"Sharpay Evans. Says in _People _that she got engaged to Chad Danforth," Bryan read from the page.

"A basketball player and an actress?" Kelsi asked skeptically.

"Yeah. Apparently, they were high school sweethearts or something. God, that would be the life. Star in a show, get popular, star in another show, win a Tony, get married to your high school sweetheart."

Kelsi twisted her lip. "Huh." She feigned a look of jealousy.

He laughed then, saying, "I never had a high school sweetheart, Kels."

She smiled back. "Neither did I."

(_And I miss you. I miss you every single day._)

-end-

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Whoa. Okay. So, the last fic, I also included an epic author's note, which is not really required here. Alls you need to know is that the words in italics in the parentheses are lyrics to the song "Clean Getaway" by Maria Taylor, and that the Upright Citizen's Brigade is a very funny improv sketch group. Amy Poehler was in it, I think. The whole thing with Broadway musicals being produced/rehearsed in San Francisco? Happened with_ Legally Blond, the Musical_ (I have no idea what the premise is and I'm scared to find out); it previewed for about a week in SanFran before moving to New York. 

Review, _please_.


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